Party like Barack Star...totally dude

Obama’s goal is to lower health care costs and ensure affordable, high-quality health care for all

under Obama’s plan a typical American family can save up to $2,500 every year on premiums by:

1.providing affordable, comprehensive and portable health coverage for every American; (basically Obama is not looking to reinvent the wheel. he basically plans to build upon and improve our current insurance system. )

· for individuals that do not have health insurance, Obama plans to create a new national health plan to allow individuals without access to affordable insurance coverage to buy coverage similar to that available to members of Congress (the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP)). the plan will provide a comprehensive benefits package (all are welcome, medical history not an issue) that will cover all essential medical services, including preventive, maternity and mental health care. the plan will have easy enrollmen, affordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles and portability (means a person can carry their insurance with them from job to job)

· for those individuals that wish to purchase private insurance, Obama plans to create a National Health Insurance Exchange. the Exchange will act as a watchdog group and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible. insurers would have to issue every applicant a policy, and charge fair and stable premiums. the Exchange will require benefits comparable to those offered in the new public plan.

· in accomplishing affordable health care for everyone- all children will have mandatory health care, Medicaid will be expanded and employers contributions will be required to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of the national plan. small employers that meet certain revenue thresholds will be exempt. (once again the money is going to have to come from somewhere. once Medicaid is expanded and State’s children’ health care programs, State will bear a huge fiscal responsible in managing this expansion. typical unfundated mandates can create serious budget deficits. many States already receive bad marks on health care coverage. the good thing is Obama does recognize the employers contribution of small employers is not feasible for a lot of companies.)

2.modernizing the U.S. health care system to contain spiraling health care costs and improve the quality of patient care(what came first the chicken or the egg? who knows but we do know when you build it they will come but the interesting part about this plan is you have build it to be efficient and cost-effective to get the results. health care systems in many parts of the country deliver high quality care to the populations they serve at half of the costs of other equally renowned academic medical centers in other parts of the country.)

Obama believes we must dramatically redesign our health system to reduce inefficiency and waste and improve health care quality, which will drive down costs for families and individuals.the Obama plan will improve efficiency and lower costs in the health care system by:offering federal reinsurance to employers to help ensure that unexpected or catastrophic illnesses do not make health insurance unaffordable or out of reach for businesses and their employeesensuring that patients receive and providers deliver the best possible care;adopting state-of-the-art health information technology systems; andreforming our market structure to increase competition.

3.promoting prevention and strengthening public health to prevent disease and protect against natural and man-made disasters.covering the uninsured and modernizing America’s health care system are urgentpriorities, but they are not enough. Obama’s plan focuses on developing preventive measures, protecting and promoting health and wellness in this nationObama believes this is shared responsibility among individuals and families, school systems, employers, the medical and public health workforce, and federal and state and local governments. His plan outlines how each must do their part, as well as collaborate with one another, to create the conditions and opportunities that will allow and encourage Americans to adopt healthy lifestyles.

ladies and gents the plan is very exaustive and looks great on paper but we find ourselves back at the same question. who's going to pay for this?! i can barely fill my gas tank up during the week. as a matter of fact, i don't think my gas tank knows what its like to be totally full. Obama's plan will cost tax payers roughly $50-65 billion dollars when totally phased-in. the start up cost could be more than that.


the Obama plan keeps focusing on the tremendous savings within the health care system that will help finance the plan. the additional revenue needed to fund the up-front investments intechnology and to help people who cannot afford health insurance is more than coveredby allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for people making more than $250,000 per year,as they are scheduled to do.


the Obama camp talks a lot about these savings but I have yet to find an actual estimate of dollar amount of what that savings will be. i will continue to search for this information. at this point i would bank on tax payers provided the up-front cost for this plan.